Three years ago, I
started my first organisation and it was a huge milestone in my line. Not many
of my peers had braved the cold weather of stepping out into entrepreneurship.
I was excited at all the possibilities and looked forward to a great future
with limitless opportunities. Soon I learnt that the rose of being an
entrepreneur came with the thorns of having to work tirelessly to get an
initiative off the ground with little or no support from the people you expect
to automatically believe in your vision. I look back at the phase of my life
with gratitude for all the vital lessons and experiences that I was able to
gather.
For a passion driven
entrepreneur, it is so easy to get caught up in a race to crack every possible
deal available. There is countless number of appointments, tasks that need your
attention as well as pressing deadlines. In the early stages of my start up, I
did almost 80% of the tasks that needed to be done and periodically got help
from friends until I was able to build a reliable team. Even after building the
team, my plate did not get cleared immediately. It took a slow process of
mentoring and nurturing to be able to delegate certain tasks to the core team
that I had developed. Things got lighter and brighter with time.
In the second year of
operation, I fell prey to the trap of working overtime and putting in every
extra hour I had into accomplishing work tasks. No doubt I achieved so much in
that year but it came at the cost of my health. For an entire year I did not
take a day off or leave. I worked during the day till late in the night,
sometimes into the next day. I carried work home so over the weekends I was
working or reading about work related concepts. To keep up with such a
lifestyle I became a coffee addict which soon took a toll on my sleep patterns.
As much as my organisation was growing, I would not live long enough to see the
fruit of my labour if I had kept up at that rate. I knew I had to slow down but
did not know how to go about it exactly.
Early 2016, I had a
burn out and it is one of the worst experiences one can go through. I decided
to have a candid talk with a respectable leader that I highly respect and look
up to. One of the advices he gave me was the need to find a balance between
work and life. I started by stopping to carry work assignments home. I set a
regular bed time for myself and started to adhere to it. I also decided to
dedicate at least one day of the weekends purely for resting and recouping. The
results have been tremendous; I am more sharp, alert and active. My creativity
is at its best and I am in a happy mood most of the time which inevitably rubs
onto the team that I lead.
As a leader or
entrepreneur, nothing is more important than your health and wellbeing. No matter
how much you accomplish, if you don’t have good health, you can’t fully enjoy
it. Most things in life have spare parts but not our bodies. There is no point
in working so hard to make money and then spend the rest of your life using
that same money to recover your health. I have learnt from experience that the
best way to pursue your vision and to impact the world is by finding the right
balance between work and life. Honoring the Sabbath rest is pivotal to enabling
you accomplish your dreams and aspirations. After six days of work, it is
paramount that you take off time to recoup and reignite your strength.
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